Professor discusses his book denying global warming

Tony Jones speaks to Melbourne University Professor Ian Plimer, who has written a book arguing global warming does not exist.

Transcript

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TONY JONES, PRESENTER: And Ian Plimer joins us now in the studio. Thanks for being here.

IAN PLIMER: Good evening.

TONY JONES: OK, is it really your claim that climate scientists have banded together in a kind of gang to commit a scientific fraud?

IAN PLIMER: Well, the IPCC is a group of fellow travellers who reinforce each other, but they're looking at the atmosphere. They're not looking at the total system of the planet, which includes the influence of space, the influence of sun, the influence of the oceans, ice and the earth. So this book is a holistic view of the planet. They are taking one part of the planet out, and just the atmosphere.

TONY JONES: OK. It's a reasonable imputation, though, to suggest they might be perpetrating a scientific fraud if you go by what's in your book. I mean, "... the culture of believers has now developed, they survive by playing safe to acquire research funding." You keep making this analogy to getting research funding being the main driving reason behind their science.

IAN PLIMER: Well, there's not much research money around and if there is a war on cancer, then there's more funds go into that war on cancer. If people are frightened witless about frying, then there's more research money goes into that.

Now, there's a small coterie of climate comrades who review each other's work, be it a research grant or a research paper, they use the same set of data, and for some really surprising reason, they actually come up with the same conclusions. And I'm arguing their view is a very narrow scientific view and that science is much broader than their small view.

TONY JONES: So you say they've got everything to gain. Well, you just heard what Mr Brooks said, I mean, it's just absurd to think that people just get together and agree on a party line before these IPCC reports.

IAN PLIMER: Well, Barry Brook is a biologist. He's done some very good work on the mass extinctions of macro fauna in Australia. That was the work that I referred to in the book. He's not a climate scientist, he's done no climate science. He should be complimented that his work is getting air time in the public domain where it never normally would have got air time. Barry's a colleague of mine, a good friend of mine, we're in the same building at the University of Adelaide. We have...

TONY JONES: He's pretty disturbed by what he's seen in your book and he's not the only one. I mean, Professor Kurt Lambeck has joined other Australian scientists in criticising your book. He says you've ignored or twisted information. He, like you, is a geophysicist.

IAN PLIMER: Well, I'm not a geophysicist...

TONY JONES: He's a geo scientist.

IAN PLIMER: He's a geophysicist who's done a lot of work on sea level changes. What he hasn't looked at is the broad scale of sea-level changes. Sea levels go up and down all the time. In my book, I show something that's well known, which he cannot dispute, and that is eastern England is falling, Scotland's rising. Scandinavia's rising, Holland is sinking.

So we're getting the land go up and down, we're getting sea levels go up and down. We've got this wonderful measuring station in Port Adelaide where sea level was measured here, and people have claimed sea level has actually risen. But in fact, the measuring station has fallen.

He also has not done work on, say, Tuvalu, where the floor of the Pacific Ocean and there's little wonder that Tuvalu is getting a relatively high sea level and nowhere else in the world is. And again, his work is very narrow geophysical work, mainly in the Mediterranean.

TONY JONES: But are you worried about his criticism of you?

IAN PLIMER: Not at all.

TONY JONES: He calls your work sloppy, he says that you've misquoted or misrepresented things that he's said.

IAN PLIMER: Not at all, this is the normal business of science where one argues about the data and they argue about the conclusions, and really, in the academic world, the bigger the argument, the smaller the issue. So I've got a thick skin, I'm quite used to having my science criticised, including criticised by myself, and that's a normal matter.

By contrast to what Barry Brooks says, this book is not a book of science. It's a book for the public who have felt quite disenfranchised and quite helpless that they have scientists talking down to them and they know there's a smell, they can't quite work out where the smell's from, but they know there's a smell, and this book is to give the public some information such that they can say, I think we're being led astray.

TONY JONES: OK, let's look at some of the information. We don't have time to go through the whole book. Let's focus on one critical aspect of your thesis. In your book you state many, many times, that the planet has been cooling, not warming, in recent years, since 1998. I counted a dozen references in one chapter, they're arguably dozens throughout the book. This is fundamental to your whole argument, isn't it?

IAN PLIMER: No, it isn't. What is fundament to the argument - if we just take the last 2000 years. The planet was hot in Roman and Greek times. Then it cooled in the dark ages, then it warmed in the medieval warmth. Then it cooled in the little ice ages, and we are now, we've just come out of the little ice age. Is it any wonder that the planet has warmed up?

TONY JONES: OK, but why the dozens of references to what's happened since 1998?

IAN PLIMER: It's all about that wonderful, four-letter word 'time'. And if you just look at the last couple of years, you might have a different idea from when you look at the complete history of the planet. For example, we've had some fiercely cold weather in eastern Australia in the last couple of days. Now, some people might be tempted, "Oh, that's proof of climate change". It isn't - it's a normal variability.

Whether you look at climate on a 10-year scale, 1,000-year scale, 100,000-year scale or a million-year scale, climates always change. They always have since the planet formed on that Thursday 4560 million years ago.

TONY JONES: OK, but here's the main question you pose at the beginning of your final chapter, which I guess is your view.

IAN PLIMER: My view.

TONY JONES: OK, so how many years must the planet cool before we acknowledge that the planet is not warming? You're once again referring to what's happened since 1998.

IAN PLIMER: Also in that chapter, in the very last bit...

TONY JONES: Yes, but you don't want to talk about what's happened since 1998. Why is that?

IAN PLIMER: When you finish interrupting yourself, I'll go on to it.

TONY JONES: I'm actually interrupting you, sorry.

IAN PLIMER: At the end of the chapter, that particular chapter, I ask a question which our global warmers never ask themselves. I ask the question, what happens if I'm wrong? Now the evidence that I use to show that the planet has been cooling is the same body of evidence that they use - it comes out to the major meteorological centres in the world. We are currently in a cooling face, before that we were in a warming phase. From 1940 to 1976 we were cooling. So we go through regular cycles of cooling and warming. The planet is dynamic, just because we're alive today doesn't mean that we are influencing the planet. It changes.

TONY JONES: OK, fair enough. Let's look at some of these meteorological stations you're talking about. You say on page 381, for example, "The Hadley Centre in the UK has shown that global warming stopped in 1998." You regard the Hadley data as reliable, I take it?

IAN PLIMER: That's one of the four centres that put out climate data, and the Hadley Centre use a slightly different database from some of the American centres, they use temperature based on thermometer measurements - some of the others use satellite and balloon. And it's interesting that there is a rough correlation, but in detail there isn't a correlation, that is one of the four centres.

TONY JONES: OK. So you obviously regard it as reliable or you wouldn't have cited it.

IAN PLIMER: No. That's one of the four centres, and the four centres differ.

TONY JONES: So for the record, do you accept the Hadley figures that the years 1998 to 2006 include the hottest, the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth hottest years in recorded history?

IAN PLIMER: That has been widely criticised across the world. Those figures are not in accord with what we get from the other climate centres, and the second thing is that the British meteorological society has actually withdrawn those comments.

Now, we know from 1959 the Royal Society of meteorologists in the UK argued that the variable climate was due to the atom bomb. In the 1970s, they argued that it was due to global cooling. Now they are arguing that we're all going to fry. So science is married to evidence - that evidence constantly accumulates and changes.

TONY JONES: Let's look at the evidence from this Hadley centre, the data for global mean temperatures. You've acknowledged they're reliable, they say 1998 is the hottest year on record, 2005 the second hottest year on record, the third hottest is 2003, the fourth 2002, the fifth hottest 2004, the sixth 2006.

Now, if these figures are right, isn't it reasonable to state that global temperatures remained on a remarkably high plateau rather than cooling, as you're suggesting?

IAN PLIMER: No, in the 1930s, it was much hotter. We had from 1920 to 1940 far less arctic sea ice than now, much, much warmer temperatures.

TONY JONES: But not according to the Hadley centre.

IAN PLIMER: One swallow doesn't make a summer, and I come back to the wonderful four letter word. If you look at a bracket of 10 years of time, that doesn't tell us what's happening to climate - that's telling us what's happening to the weather. And the second thing is that the Hadley Centre has been widely criticised, especially in the US, for those figures. NASA also gave similar figures, which they withdrew.

TONY JONES: I'll go through that in a moment. I will come to that, I promise you. Let's look at 2008 when the La Nina event impacted on temperatures. As you've written, it led to blizzards in China, 40 per cent of the rice crop killed by the cold in Vietnam, record low temperatures in Mumbai and Minnesota. So you actually signal out one year to make a demonstration yourself. Yet the Hadley data shows that 2008 was still warmer than any year prior to 1995. Than any year back to 1880.

IAN PLIMER: A number of things - that's been widely criticised, as I'll now mention three times, NASA tried to do the same, and that was withdrawn by NASA.

TONY JONES: Well, it wasn't, but I'll come to that.

IAN PLIMER: And the last point is that if you look at climate over a very short period of time, and the period since 1850. Since we've come out of the little ice age, is it any wonder that after we come out of the little ice age, temperature changes. And the only way to understand what climate is doing is to look at history. Now the one point I make in this book is we are ignoring history at our peril. The Hadley Centre might be looking at 10, 20, or 50 years of information - that tells us nothing about the way the world is going.

TONY JONES: I understand your bigger point, except for the fact that you've spent so much of the book, you've quoted so many times, that from 1998 to now, that's a period of a little over 10 years, the climate has cooled, not warmed. I mean, you state that in order to make your argument mean something.

IAN PLIMER: No, in order to show that the planet is variable, and planet Earth is dynamic. We live in Australia on the most variable habitat continents in terms of weather and climate on the world, and the key point I'm making is the planet is variable.

It always changes, it's dynamic, and to take a very small bracket of time is like looking at the love scene in Casablanca. That film is not about love, it's about a totally different topic. And if you just take a couple of years, it's not telling you anything. So if it is cooling...

TONY JONES: I probably wouldn't be making so much of this if you hadn't made so much of that 10-year period yourself.

IAN PLIMER: Well, you're only talking about chapter seven - there are eight chapters in the book.

TONY JONES: I'm talking about the introduction, I'm talking about the final chapter, I'm talking about the chapter on air as well. The latest NASA analysis states, that's April of 2009, from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, states that 2008 was the ninth warmest year in recorded history. Now, does that figure make you think again about how much the earth is cooling?

IAN PLIMER: It makes me think how warm it was in the dust bowl years of the US. It makes me think how that period, from 1920 to 1940, was a very, very warm period, and shows, it shows me what we know when we look back in time. And that is that the planet is variable, we have cycles of climate, and these cycles of climate are huge and for human arrogance to think that we can actually change the way the planet operates is really quite laughable.

TONY JONES: Let's go back to your book. Pages 98, 99, where you tackle the issue of NASA's claim that 2005 was the hottest in recorded history. You state that NASA had to reverse - I think you've just repeated it a moment ago - NASA had to reverse that position on the basis of work undertaken by Toronto based statistician Steve McIntyre, that's right, isn't it?

IAN PLIMER: Yes.

TONY JONES: So it's correct.

IAN PLIMER: Well, that's the claim of the statisticians, that NASA was wrong and NASA withdrew as a result of that. The statisticians also showed that the frightening curve that you once showed, where we are going into this period of unstoppable global warming, was in fact grossly wrong.

TONY JONES: And you claim that NASA now states the four top years of high temperatures are in fact the 1930s.

IAN PLIMER: That was in 1930, there was a date in the 1920s, and one in the 1940s.

TONY JONES: OK, you mean the hottest global temperatures were in that period.

IAN PLIMER: No, the hottest US temperatures, not the hottest global temperatures. They occur in mid-latitude deserts. They don't occur in areas such as the US, which is not mid-latitude desert.

TONY JONES: So, in fact, what NASA changed was a series of figures on data of temperature in the USA, which made very little or no change to the global mean temperatures. Isn't that correct?

IAN PLIMER: Unfortunately, we have 30 years of satellite and balloon measurements of global temperatures. They are not in accord with the other ways we measure temperature, which is done with thermometers in areas where we've got a huge amount of heat given out by villages as small as 1,000 people. And so one set of data where we use a thermometer gives us a completely different story to when we use radioson balloons and satellites. And if we've got two separate data sets, to start making claims, as we've heard from many meteorological centres, is absolutely erroneous.

TONY JONES: But your book on those pages essentially claims that in the 1930 we saw the hottest years on the world record, and that's what NASA had to change.

IAN PLIMER: We saw them in the US.

TONY JONES: You actually said the correct thing here, it's in fact in the United States. It isn't in the world.

IAN PLIMER: Well, the first thing is that global temperature is a very difficult thing to measure. Secondly, we have a huge bias in the measuring station, and they are mainly in western countries, European countries - they're not in areas where we might get very high temperatures such as in the deserts.

TONY JONES: OK, but this mistake about what NASA did to its figures, about global mean temperatures, repeated on a huge number of blogs put out by climate sceptics - now is that where you got your information?

IAN PLIMER: Well, I don't know what a climate sceptic is. Could you explain to me what a climate sceptic is?

TONY JONES: Someone sceptical of climate change.

IAN PLIMER: I'm not. I'm arguing that when you look at the history of the planet - when you look at the history of the planet, climate is always changing. Now, you're pushing these points very hard, Tony. Now, if I embrace your party line...

TONY JONES: It's not a party line.

IAN PLIMER: Are you going to respect me in the morning, when I embrace your party line?

TONY JONES: This is the NASA line from the NASA and the Hadley Institutes. Now, they are two of the main institutes for checking global textures. If one says that the temperature has gone down, the global warming has stopped in 1998, if one says that as you do, you've surely got to back it up.

IAN PLIMER: Can you explain to me, then, how a measurement of a temperature today, by ignoring all of history, which you're now doing, which is terribly dangerous, can you explain to me how measuring temperature today is going to tell us anything about the future?

TONY JONES: Well, I mean, I wondered that when I read your repeated line that what happened from 1998 to 2010 tells the picture of what's going on right now.

IAN PLIMER: Chapter two is called 'History'. Did you read that?

TONY JONES: I did, yes. But it seems to me in the end...

IAN PLIMER: Are you sure?

TONY JONES: Yes. It seems to me - I did, it's about all the periods of interglacial warmings, et cetera.

IAN PLIMER: Now, wait a minute. It's also about the cooling, and it's also the effect that warmth has on humans, where they thrive and the cooling, which depopulates humans. Now that is a history of humans. You are ignoring history and looking at today's measurements and trying to predict the future, and that is erroneous.

That's what the book is about; it's saying let's look at the whole planet as it is, let us forget what's happening today, let's intertwine that with everything. Let's look at what space is doing, let's look back in the past. You, unfortunately, are trying to ignore all of history, and you do that at your peril.

TONY JONES: Well, I think what I'm doing is actually quoting what you repeatedly state...

IAN PLIMER: Out of context because chapter two is on history.

TONY JONES: Yes.

IAN PLIMER: Chapter three is on the earth. Chapter four is on ice. Chapter five on water.

TONY JONES: Yes, that's true, and I think I said we don't have time to talk about every one of those chapters, but on one of the key things that you talk about repeatedly in your book. That the earth has been cooling since 1998.

IAN PLIMER: No, the key thing I talk about is the earth, is the earth is dynamic. It's always changing, and my argument with the climatologists, and climatology is really just modern geology in action. My argument is, they're forgetting time, and they're cherry picking small amounts of information. And this book is a comprehensive view of the way the planet works, written for the average person who feels helpless and disenfranchised by the sort of bullying that they get from scientists and various media networks who have got a bias, who are pushing their story, and as I ask you again, if I follow the party line, are you going to respect me in the morning?

TONY JONES: Well, I respected you enough to bring you on the show to talk about what you're saying. And we certainly all took that view when we asked you to come here. So I suppose the answer to that would have to be yes. Thank you very much for joining us.